T. Boyle - San Miguel

“You see the yellow flowers on the cliffs there? That’s deerweed, but the funny thing is there’re no deer to eat it.”

“Just sheep.”

“Right, just sheep. Our sheep. And you’ll catch sight of them soon enough. But the other patches of yellow — see them? — with the flowers all bunched? That’s coreopsis. Giant coreopsis. Bob says it’s only found on the islands, the giant kind, anyway. But you’re lucky. This is the season when it’s all in bloom, because come summer, when the rains are over, everything goes dormant and it’s just this brown thatch—”

She was fighting for breath. She’d tied her hair up in a kerchief and she could feel the sweat at her temples. Good sweat, productive sweat, and how amazing to be here, in a wild place, with her husband beside her, a canvas pack slung over her shoulder and her legs digging at a hill that seemed to go on rising forever — just the two of them and not another soul for miles. Everything in the past three weeks had been a mad whirl, the berth on the train, unfamiliar beds, the hurried marriage that was really more of an elopement because of the murder out on San Nicolas Island. Her sister Anna had exhausted herself planning a formal wedding for them down the coast in La Jolla, but they’d had to throw all that out the window — there just wasn’t time to arrange for the license and blood tests, not in California. But Arizona was another story. In Arizona, things got done. And so, because Bob Brooks was subpoenaed to go and testify at the trial of one of his hirelings who’d fired on a poachers’ boat and hit the man at the oars — killed him, that is — she had to climb back on another train and rattle across the desert to St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Yuma and then rattle back again, because Herbie was needed here, needed urgently, wedding or no. She wasn’t complaining, even under her breath — it had been the most intensely romantic thing she could ever have dreamed of — but she was tired and the hill was steeper than a ski slope and her feet were like lead weights.

“Tell me about the house again,” she said. “And our bed. What’s our bed like?”

“Oh, it’s first-rate, splendid, grandest bed in the world. A big old sleigh bed, made of mahogany, with a mattress as soft as, I don’t know, butterscotch pudding with whipped cream on top—”

“And just as cold?”

“Not with you in it, not anymore. And it’s got the very highest quality Army blankets tucked in tight and my grandmother’s quilt spread over top of them. And pillows. Pillows like your mother’s breasts—”

“Herbie—”

“Or my mother’s, anyway. And there’s a stove there, right in the bedroom, to keep you warm through the night — as soon as I can get the stovepipe hooked back up, that is. Plus, the room’s big, biggest room in the house, and the house is practically new too, built by Captain Waters and his caretaker not twenty-five years ago with choice planks from the wreck of a ship carrying, of all things, lumber, can you imagine? I guess they just abandoned the old one at that point — whether it was too small or falling apart, I don’t know. But I’ll show you the ruins of it, amazing, really, the way a place can go to wrack and ruin in no time, everything buried in sand like in that poem, what’s it called? You know, the one from your Oxford Book . Lord Byron—”

“Shelley.”

“Shelley, yeah, Shelley. But the place, our place, has views you could only pray for if you were back there on the mainland”—he was whirling round to point now, walking backward without even breaking stride, feet pumping, the mud nothing to him—“all balled up in that shithouse life that never stops, automobiles and trains and lunch counters, everybody running around like they’re in a race, some marathon to nowhere… and you’ll see, it’s head-on to the wind, like a big inverted V laid out on the ground, with a courtyard in the middle and fences to keep the blow out. And the sand, of course. Because the sand’s like snow out here, you’ve got to understand that, sandstorms coming up out of nowhere and piling up drifts against anything they can’t carry off. And — but come on there, girl, we’ve got to get up top so I can show you over the place and then hitch up the horses and bring everything back up the hill before it’s black dark. You wouldn’t want your books to get all wet and moldy, would you, your library, I mean, and how many did you say you packed up back there in New York, a thousand?”

She tried to shrug, all in good fun, banter, banter with her husband, but she was struggling too hard to waste the extra motion. “Half that.”

“But still,” he said.

* * *

The place was cold and dark, a long rambling succession of rooms and doors upon doors that could have been the set for a Mack Sennett picture with clowns piling out everywhere except that there was practically nothing in them but for the odd chair or cot, the table in the kitchen, the sleigh bed in the master bedroom. Herbie set their things on the kitchen table and bent to the stove to get it lit, then took her by the hand and skipped her through the rooms — and here was where the shearers stayed and there, across the courtyard, was the smithy and the storage shed he was going to convert into a taproom just as soon as he got the chance, their own private taproom, and how did she like that? Prohibition? What Prohibition? On their own island? And out there, beyond the fence? Those were the shearing sheds. And the barn. Where the horses were.

“Do you need help?”

“No, I’ll bring it all up in two trips with the sled. It’s nothing. Really.”

“In the dark?”

“Yes, in the dark.”

She wanted to know if she should see to making something for supper, their first supper in their new home, and he could barely contain himself, his feet jumping in place as if to some jazz band playing in his head, and yes, yes, that would be splendid, grand, and maybe she could put the kettle on for some tea?

So she made use of the hand pump at the sink and filled the pot and set it on the stovetop while the firebox coughed and roared and chewed up the wood she fed into it stick by stick. The place was clean enough, spare, almost Essene, the floors scrupulously swept, the counters dusted, dishes washed and stacked, not at all what she would have expected from a bachelor’s residence, and she wondered if it had been spruced up specially for her. But no, her husband was like that, orderly, precise, finicky almost to a fault. Though the place could use a woman’s touch, she could see that. Curtains wouldn’t hurt. A few pictures on the walls. A carpet.

Herbie had been alone here since the first of the year, but for Jimmie (who’d been out on the island as long as the rocks on Green Mountain, or so she gathered). Bob Brooks had relieved him so he could whisk his bride off to Yuma before coming back as full-time caretaker with an option to buy in, but Bob Brooks had a whole host of other concerns to look after, not to mention a murder trial to attend. And Jimmie, apparently, was incapable of doing the job himself, though she couldn’t fathom why. Maybe he was untrustworthy. Maybe he was a drunk. Or a dope fiend. Or lazy. Or just one of those men who never seem to grow up no matter how old they are.

She began sorting the groceries they’d hauled up in their packs, vegetables and dairy mostly, because there was no garden out here and no cow either and after the first few days milk was going to have to come out of the can. And cheese. They’d have to husband their cheese — or wife it, if that was a verb, and why shouldn’t it be? Eggs too. Herbie had carried the eggs in his pack, six cartons of them, because she was afraid of the responsibility, and as she folded back the canvas flap and lifted them off the top of his pack, she saw — or felt, rather — that a few hadn’t made it intact. Which in that instant gave her the inspiration for the first night’s menu: omelettes aux fines herbes avec fromage naturel et pain de l’épicerie .